The Indicator from Planet Money

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What's The Indicator from Planet Money about?

A little show about big ideas. From the people who make Planet Money, The Indicator helps you make sense of what's happening today. It's a quick hit of insight into work, business, the economy, and everything else. Listen weekday afternoons.

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The rat under the Fed's hat

09.20.2023

The Federal Reserve said today it wasn't raising interest rates, but left the door open to keep hiking later. But there's more to this decision than meets the eye. Today on the show, we use Disney's Ratatouille to explain the ...

The Indicator from Planet Money episodes:

09.20.2023 The rat under the Fed's hat The Federal Reserve said today it wasn't raising interest rates, but left the door open to keep hiking later. But there's more to this decision than meets the eye. Today on the show, we use Disney's Ratatouille to explain the ...
09.19.2023 The Beigie Awards: Manufacturing takes center stage The Beigies roll around once again to recognize the regional Federal Reserve Bank with the best Beige Book entry. This edition's winner put a spotlight on a company increasing their efforts to recruit young people for an important piece of ...
09.18.2023 Coca Cola v. Coca Pola The coca leaf has been an important part of Andean culture for thousands of years. But when one indigenous woman decided to use the plant in a drink she calls Coca Pola, she awoke a sleeping giant. Today on the ...
09.15.2023 Economics, boosternomics and Swiftnomics For this week's Indicators of the Week, Darian is joined by NPR colleagues Jeff Guo and Sydney Lupkin. We get into the latest numbers on child poverty in the U.S. and what it tells us about effective policy intervention. Sydney ...
09.15.2023 Wait — did we really need to raise rates? Inflation remains stubbornly high as the Federal Open Markets Committee weighs whether they will raise interest rates again. However, new research suggests that elevated interest rates weren't the primary driver for the decline in inflation. Today, we take a look ...
09.14.2023 Giant vacuums and other government climate bets Yesterday we brought you a debate over whether the government should subsidize industries in the name of economic growth and societal benefits. Today on the show, we zero in on the climate industrial policy of the Biden administration, which is ...
09.12.2023 Industrial policy, the debate! There is a lot of taxpayer money going into propping up industry in the U.S. From semiconductor chip fabrication in Arizona to green hydrogen plants in California. Is this smart policy? Today on the Indicator, our guests debate! We're joined ...
09.11.2023 Is retail theft getting worse? Lately, retailers have been complaining to their investors about thieves coming to their stores and stealing stuff and blaming them for falling profits. It's the biggest part of a well-known industry problem called "shrink," but is this trend as pervasive ...
09.08.2023 Apple, drugs, Grindr Today on Indicators of the Week: government iPhone restrictions in China that walloped Apple's market value. Plus plans emerge over how the US government plans to negotiate drug prices. Also, a mass exodus of employees from a top dating app ...
09.07.2023 'Welcome to the USA! Now get to work.' When refugees arrive in the U.S. the clock starts ticking. They usually have up to 90 days to get a job and become 'self-sufficient'. Researcher Blair Sackett says that that's simply not enough time for refugees to acclimate to a ...
09.06.2023 The dementia tax More than 7 million Americans are living with dementia. To take care of this population, family members must often make the difficult choice of giving up work or paying for a costly facility. Today on the show, the rising cost ...
09.05.2023 The Beigie Awards: China Edition The Beigies are back, with a twist! In China, data on the economy is sometimes difficult to come by, so we thought we'd take a leaf out of the US Federal Reserve's Beige Book instead. Today, we bring you some ...
09.01.2023 Jobs Friday: More jobs and more unemployment The jobs report is in! And both the rate of employment AND unemployment went up in August. How does that happen? Plus, how disabled people are doing in the labor market. For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, ...
08.31.2023 A drought, a jam, a canal — Panama! The Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It sees hundreds of billions worth of stuff pass through it every year. But a historic drought is making it a little harder for big cargo ships to get through the ...
08.30.2023 Young, "spoiled and miserable" in China Every day, A Ze, a young woman in Beijing, would wake up early, do her makeup, and walk to her old work bus stop... and keep going. She'd left her job but couldn't let her parents know. China's urban youth ...
08.29.2023 The problems with the US's farm worker program Over the years, U.S. agriculture has grown increasingly dependent on the H-2A Guest Worker program to bring in foreign workers to harvest crops. H2A is a vestige of a U.S. and Mexican policy called the Bracero Program, which ended in ...
08.28.2023 The Indicator Quiz: The Internet What's hotter than a leather car seat in the late summer? The Indicator Quiz! We bring a listener onto the show and test their econ knowledge. Today's quiz is all about the Internet and artificial intelligence. Play along with us ...
08.25.2023 AI chips, shared trips, and a shorter work week It's Indicators of the Week, our weekly news roundup. Today, AI doesn't want to invest in AI, a county in Washington state implements a 4-day work week, and NYC says bye bye to Airbnb, sorta. For sponsor-free episodes of The ...
08.24.2023 Why a weak ruble is good for Russia's budget but not Putin's image Russia's Ruble is hovering around its lowest value against the dollar since June 2022. A weak currency is already a big deal for ordinary people affected by inflation, but in Russia, the concern is only amplified because of the Ruble's ...
08.23.2023 How fed up farmers started the only government-run bank in the US The idea of a state-run bank in the United States feels like a foreign concept. While public banks are fixtures of the financial system in countries like Canada and Chile, only one state in the U.S. can say they have ...
08.22.2023 Why pizza costs more in Iceland and other listener questions You ask, we answer! We help a parent explain exchange rates to their kid, a high school teacher explain bond prices to his students, and we follow up on what happened to the diversity of the student body at the ...
08.21.2023 The echo of the bison For over 10,000 years, many peoples in what's now known as North America relied on bison. Thirty million of these creatures stretched from modern Canada all the way down to Mexico. But in the late 1800s hide-hunters and the U.S. ...
08.18.2023 Metals, government debt, and a climate lawsuit Last year, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law as the Biden Administration's signature attempt to combat climate change. Today, we present three climate-related indicators with guest Nate Hegyi of the public radio podcast, Outside/In. For sponsor-free episodes of ...
08.17.2023 When mortgage rates are too low to give up The average mortgage rate in the U.S. just hit 7.09%—its highest level in more than two decades. And that's having ripple effects in the wider economy. Some homeowners feel locked in, tethered to their super low interest rates and unable ...
08.16.2023 How Yellow wound up in the red Yellow stunned the trucking industry when it filed for bankruptcy this month. The nearly hundred-year old company said it will lay off 30,000 employees and liquidate all of its assets. On today's show, a glimpse into Yellow's bankruptcy process: who's ...
08.15.2023 Is math real? And other existential questions We are often taught to think of math as a rigid set of rules, never to be questioned. But that is exactly the wrong way to think about it, according to one mathematician. Today on the show, we talk to ...
08.14.2023 Breaking up big business is hard to do The Federal Trade Commission is the sheriff for big businesses. One of its main functions is to stop companies from buying up other companies in a way that hurts competition. Those investigations have been going way up under FTC Chair ...
08.11.2023 Tale as old as time: Indicators of the Week In a week jam-packed with major economic news, we've selected a few of our favorite stories for Indicators of the Week. Today we cover an Italian bank story, the drop in Chinese imports and the $1.6 billion acquisition of Simon ...
08.10.2023 Is this a bank? You've heard of The Price Is Right, but what about Is This A Bank? It's a game show where contestants puzzle over some obvious and not-so-obvious places where people store their money. This podcast may or may not remind you ...
08.09.2023 A night at the museum of the economy Dinosaur museums have dinosaurs. Space museums have spacecraft. But what would a dedicated museum of the economy have in it? That was a question author and friend of the show Tim Harford recently posed in his column for the Financial ...
08.08.2023 Return of the crab twins RaeShawn and LaShone Middleton are twin sisters and business owners based in Columbia, Maryland. We last talked to them in the midst of the pandemic when they were just getting started with their steamed crab delivery service called R&L; Crab. ...
08.07.2023 What could break next? Even if there isn't a recession right now, there are still vulnerable spots in the economy that could cause economic pain. Today on the show, we explore why some are concerned about the markets for commercial real estate and private ...
08.04.2023 Farm Jobs Friday Farm employment numbers are historically very hard to track. Partly because they fluctuate a lot from season to season, partly because a large portion of farm workers are undocumented. They're also not included in the monthly job numbers, which means ...
08.03.2023 The life and death spirals of social networks Meta's new social media platform, Threads, had a rocket-like start when it launched a month ago as a challenger to X (formerly known as Twitter). But it's far from clear which platform will prove dominant. Today, an expert in online ...
08.02.2023 Fitch, please! Why Fitch lowered the US credit rating The credit rating agency, Fitch, caused a stir yesterday when it downgraded the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA plus. This came less than a week since Federal Reserve staff stopped forecasting a recession on the horizon. So ...
08.01.2023 When remote work works and when it doesn't Do office workers get as much done working from home as they do in person? We've been debating this question for years. At the beginning of the pandemic, many economists thought yes, people can be just as productive from home. ...
07.31.2023 An economic argument for heat safety regulation (Encore) It's been a summer of record breaking heat. And for both outdoor and indoor workers, that heat poses a growing health risk. Around the country, worker advocates and industry groups are in an ongoing fight over how to address extreme ...
07.28.2023 IRS, Ivies and GDP In this edition of Indicators of the Week, we talk about the end of surprise IRS visits, new research on elite college admissions, and why a soft landing is in sight. For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, ...
07.27.2023 Why residuals are taking center stage in actors' strike Hollywood has been on strike for weeks with writers and actors hitting picket lines from California to New York. The unions for both groups, the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, say a major sticking point in negotiations with major ...
07.26.2023 Hiking the last mile on inflation The Federal Reserve finds itself in a tricky spot with inflation just a notch above its target of 2%. This poses a challenge for the central bank as they enter what's known as the "last mile" of monetary policy. Today, ...
07.25.2023 Women's labor comeback Lots of women left the workforce early in the pandemic. At the time, there were fears these women would stay out of the workforce for years, if they returned at all. But women's participation in the labor force, between the ...
07.24.2023 A lesson in Barbie labor economics After a stunning box office opening of more than $300 million worldwide for the new Greta Gerwig film, the Barbieverse is having its moment. So what better time to examine what Barbie's 200-plus careers over the decades—from fashion model to ...
07.22.2023 Trucks, transfers and trolls Tired of waiting days for your money to transfer in the bank? So is the Fed. It's just launched a new instant payment system that could mean no more waiting for your paycheck to come through. Plus, after a nearly ...
07.21.2023 A first-class postal economics primer The price of mailing a first-class letter in the U.S. went up to .66 this month, part of a series of price hikes that the postal service hopes will put it on a pathway to profitability. But from its inception, ...
07.19.2023 A former teen idol takes on crypto Cryptocurrency's rise attracted the endorsements of several high-profile celebrities during the pandemic. Actor Ben McKenzie, however, wasn't really convinced by the promise of crypto and has emerged as a surprising skeptic of the industry. Today, we talk to him about ...
07.18.2023 Boats, bikes and the Beigies The Beigies are back and headed down south! From boats and bikes to pigs and cows, you could call this one a wild ride. Eight times a year, the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks come together to share anecdotes from ...
07.17.2023 How Asimov's 'Foundation' has inspired economists When we talk about classic economic texts, you might think of something like Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." But how about the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov? One of the big ideas at the heart of this science fiction ...
07.14.2023 @Threads, @Nasdaq, @Bank of America It's time again for our Indicators of the Week! Today on the show, we've got a new social network, a new lineup for an old stock index and some new fines for old grievances. Listen to the numbers that caught ...
07.14.2023 Time to make banks more stressed? Stress tests are one of the many tools the Federal Reserve has to regulate the financial system. So why didn't stress tests help prevent the bank failures of Silicon Valley, Signature and First Republic? Today, we explain how stress tests ...
07.12.2023 What's behind the China deflation scare Earlier this week, China reported a headline CPI of zero. Observers are concerned about the potential for a deflationary environment in China that could have ripple effects for the rest of the world. Today, we find out why prices are ...

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